Educating Children / Transforming Worlds

Raised by an immigrant father and an orphaned mother in the deep south of Mississippi and Texas, Erna Grasz is an unusual champion of Africa. Erna learned early that education leads to a better life. On a visit to Africa in 2005, Erna met Emily Moshi, (Tanzanian), and Hellen Nkuraiya, (Kenyan).  Inspired by their vision of enhancing education in rural East Africa, they founded Asante Africa Foundation.  Leveraging her leadership and business skills enabled her to balance her roles as a Silicon Valley Engineer and CEO of the nonprofit. She left the corporate world in 2012 to lead Asante Africa Foundation full time. The organization has now impacted more than 600,000 children in 335 schools in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  Erna has received numerous awards including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the “Distinguished Engineering” award for innovation in developing countries, and the Fellowship Award from the Gratitude Network.

Asante Africa Foundation is dedicated to bringing quality education and life-skills training to deeply rural communities in East Africa.  Our unique, globally-recognized model utilizes a Learn-Do-Teach methodology for skill development and novel Pay-it-Forward concepts to ensure youth apply their skills to local needs and opportunities benefiting themselves and their communities.  The program is a replicable, low-cost, high-impact solution. We promote gender equality and social inclusion creating social entrepreneurs, stimulating local economies, and providing alternatives to urban migration. 

“Proposed Elevate Project” - We propose to bring our unique Learn-Do-Teach model to 100 new rural schools or youth safe space groups.  Each replication, locally owned and championed, and contextualized to the needs and opportunities in each community.  Each program directly benefits >100 student participants per school/safe-space group including hundreds more benefiting through youth-developed, pay-it-forward initiatives.

Africa is the youngest continent with 60% of people under 18. In Tanzania, only 28% of rural youth go beyond class 7. Those who do graduate face a gap in skills, systemic gender inequities, and employment insufficient to support the existing population.

Current curricula have proven insufficient to prepare students for life after graduation. Quality education is the solution, enabling every child to thrive where they stand. Youth are the changemakers who will create solutions to reverse global warming, develop healthcare solutions, break the links to poverty, and create strong economies.

With COVID-19 spreading across the continent, illness, deaths, and economic impact dramatically increase these challenges. School closures have put more children at risk and increase the likelihood of early marriages and forced labor. Vulnerable children bear the brunt of long-term economic, educational, and health impacts. Now more than ever, there is a critical need to focus on  gender equity, skill building, training youth in critical thinking, innovation and problem-solving. 

Asante Africa Foundation’s success is anchored by the delivery of educational and life skills programs in East African communities reaching adolescents through early adults utilizing active learning and relevant problem solving.

We have developed a unique, adaptable approach that combines  Learn-Do-Teach methodology empowering youth to learn, apply, teach, and retain skills.  Our Pay-it-Forward philosophy stimulates confidence and investments in themselves, their families, and their communities.   Youth develop competence and confidence to solve problems, influence elders, and contribute to community solutions. 

Our approach empowers youth to practice proactive leadership, problem-solving, mentoring, and innovation focused on their local challenges.

Learn - Knowledge Acquisition 

Delivered in girl-led, school-based clubs with alumni mentors, our youth learn life skills by developing personalized roadmaps, creating entrepreneurship and employability awareness, communication and teamwork competencies, and in-depth application of leadership skills.

Do - Knowledge Application

Hands-on experimentation turns concepts into reality and ideas into action, paving the way for community enterprises and workforce creation.

Teach - Knowledge Transfer 

Momentum generated by educated and empowered youth creates  change ripples across villages, counties, and national borders. Participants collaborate with peers, parents, and facilitators to implement plans that actively transfer knowledge and create grassroots change.

Pay-it-Forward - Sustainable impact 

Youth-led initiatives create local project ownership, stimulating income-generating activities to support schools, and parents requesting the program for themselves. Our youth have created community-serving NGOs, knowledge transfer via radio programs, and family businesses.

Our primary customer is off-the-grid, school-aged, highly at-risk youth, ages 10-24, in rural East Africa, with focus on girls and young women yet inclusive of boys and young men. Disenfranchised youth in these remote environments are frequently excluded from mainstream development and face complex challenges systemic to poverty in East Africa. They do not have access to electricity or the internet and the COVID pandemic has isolated them even further.

Participatory Action Research is fundamental to how the youth, their parents, and educators identify their local issues and then develop local solutions. Collaboratively we identify capacity building needed to tackle those tough systemic problems. Once challenges are identified, a contextualized program is co-developed utilizing proven and rights-based modules and activities.

For programs to succeed in a deeply rural community, they must be owned locally, low-cost to sustain, and address recognized local problems. Families and communities observe the change in youth, seek the same knowledge, and become the “ripple” beneficiaries of learned knowledge and skills. We have direct evidence across 300 communities in 3 countries that lives are transformed not just for our primary customer but also secondary beneficiaries such as parents, siblings, families, peers, and village leaders.

We believe every child deserves to utilize their talents and skills to architect their future, care for those they love and tackle problems with local solutions.  The communities where we work are typically overlooked by larger NGOs.

Our programs teach gender equity and human rights along with leadership and life skills. Instilling the value of pay-it-forward we have empowered 600,000 seedlings, each taking root in their communities and radiating change from where they  plant themselves. 

Even parents have requested “pay-it-forward” training when they saw their children “doing it” and wanted to know how to do it as well.

Asante Africa Foundation began as a scholarship provider to rural youth. We observed girls dropping out of primary school because of early marriage, cultural norms, or child labor.  Many had a lack of health knowledge, life skills, and self-confidence to continue education.  Erna’s training led her to seek system solutions to system problems.

This led to our adolescent program, Wezesha Vijana (“Empowering Ourselves” in Swahili).  Young teens began to advocate for skills to stand up to abuse, represent their own interests, and engage their parents in their education.  They wanted tools to help them design opportunities and tackle hardships that lay beyond high school. 

These needs led to the development of age-appropriate life skills, leadership, and entrepreneurship hands-on activities for primary and secondary school youth. Participants include the youth, educators, and the community members. 

We focus on developing the most precious resource - the human resource. We are committed to ensure that actions and values are aligned for all involved with the organization. We invest in the youth and their parents, our global staff, world-wide volunteers, partners, and investors. We are creating a “new normal” in rural Africa: educated children with big dreams, skills, and resources to act on them.

As a young teen, my parents divorced and I became a “latch key kid” raising myself and my sister while my mother worked double shifts  as a nurse. As a poor single-parent-led family, we frequently experienced “bad charity” that limited personal choice, forced outside solutions, stripped my mother's dignity, created a sense of humiliation and embarrassment, and fueled my frustration that there must be a better way to help. I needed skills, not handouts.  I needed a hand up. I learned that education is the great equalizer and enabler of the knowledge, courage and resiliency to thrive, not just survive.

 As an engineer I learned design thinking and a systems approach to problem-solving. As a young adult I became allergic to traditional “charity” and shied away from organizations that did not actively engage those being served.  Asante Africa Foundation was founded as an accelerator and bridge builder, with a passion that all “on the ground” decisions should be made by those impacted by the consequences. All programming and strategy are created and guided locally. While this may be a slower and more iterative process, it builds the skills of those impacted and creates the ownership required for sustainable impact.

After receiving my Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, I joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where I led multi–million dollar programs focused on cutting edge engineering design and integration. I lead groundbreaking work, such as the deployment of robotic systems for land mine discovery and radioactive material handling. I also played an integral role on the team who successfully built the world’s largest highest-energy laser, the National Ignition Facility, a premier international center for experimental science. 

I spent the next decade in Silicon Valley turning around underperforming business units and creating high-performing teams delivering results. It was during these years I led wide-changing efforts, managed global multi-million-dollar programs, and led start-ups, turnarounds, and large-scale transformation. Throughout my career, systems thinking and inclusive leadership fueled my success.

My personal challenges in childhood, coupled with a lifelong commitment to giving back, laid the foundation for creating Asante Africa Foundation in 2007 to educate East Africa’s youth to confidently address life’s challenges, thrive in the global economy, and catalyze positive change.

As Asante Africa Foundation’s CEO, my leadership and global business expertise is dedicated to the global non-profit sector. Our strong belief in leveraging local talent and partnerships to ensure the foundation’s success and long-term sustainability. Our global team has a common commitment: to collaborate with rural African communities to educate children who have brilliance and dreams – but lack opportunity. 

In this world of opportunity, I recognize the talent and brilliance that others saw in me as a child.

I am trained and energized to translate complex situations into manageable risks—each solvable. I believe It is essential to convert “failures” into learning moments.  “Failing Forward” is practiced within the organization and with our youth. 

We recognize we may not have all the tools required for success and need assistance from others to tackle tough problems. As a corporate executive driving technology to maturation, I learned to lead through ambiguity, provide structure in chaos, and mobilize global talent. Seeing challenges as opportunities and empowering others has been the key to tackling difficult problems.

In East Africa, adaptability is critical. Challenges and opportunities vary regionally and there is never a one-size fits all solution. Frugal innovation teaches that money is not the answer to every problem and utilizing local resources is key to success.

When the COVID-19 crisis hit East Africa and our programs were interrupted by mitigation efforts, our staff and youth mobilized to help their communities. They provided soap and handwashing stations, printed and distributed COVID information from the WHO in the local language, and food and basic supplies to needy families in their communities.  Our educated youth rose to the global challenge with local solutions.

As a young woman engineer with a gregarious personality, I recognized that I would have to shape my own mold for success. Over this past decade, I have had the good fortune of tackling seemingly insurmountable challenges and experiencing the resilience and creativity of our staff and community leaders, and the children, parents, and educators with whom we partner. 

We have trained rural East African youth to find opportunity in the midst of chaos, applying their tools and skills to think critically and lead those around them. True leadership and creativity is being demonstrated at every level of Team Asante Africa in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The East African country executives have rallied global donors to partner financially. Our staff co-created community responses with local government officials, and our young alumni were in the lead. They are innovating new businesses (vegetables, soap, masks, water stations), teaching safety and health in local languages on the radio, and through social media, and with intention purchasing locally to keep the smallest shops operational. 

During this pandemic we are proudly observing real leadership in action and the fruits of our years of collaborative efforts in East Africa and around the world.

While most NGOs work in urban areas, we operate in overlooked rural communities sparking innovation, ethical leadership, and prosperity. Our model emphasizes quality, hands-on learning, gender equality, financial literacy, and modern technology to which they previously had no access. While the Learn-Do-Teach model is a common classroom pedagogy in developed countries, we applied it to beyond-the-classroom life skills workshops.

Our Pay-it-Forward philosophy develops cognitive skills, decision-making capacity, and leadership qualities by putting students’ learning into practice. They’re finding ways to lead from wherever they stand, not waiting for someone to define or solve their problems. They form leadership clubs and NGOs, create income-generating projects, advocate respectfully with community leaders, and effect sustainable, positive change.

To be successful, our programs must include: sustainability, low barriers to initiate, ease of replication, and obvious social and economic impact.   Working in 330+ schools, we have a proven process of replication within districts, across county and country borders, adapting to specific needs and opportunities within each community. 

Replication requires strong “pull” from communities and an internal champion to advocate.  We develop systemic support by engaging Head Teachers, Community Development Officials and District Education Officials.  Within a school, our youth mentor younger students and teach parents sanitation, hygiene, finance, and business skills. District educators champion expansion into additional schools. Cost effective replication is achieved with experienced alumni becoming teachers, mentors, and regional coordinators.  Our youth become the trained agents for propagation of the program.

Our passion is awakening the talent and potential of disadvantaged rural youth in East Africa. This awakening and journey to sustainable, economic growth starts with education. To stimulate learning and economic empowerment, Asante Africa Foundation is transforming education and life skills development for young people in deeply rural East Africa, promoting gender equality, innovation, and critical thinking. The desired end state is a network of responsible entrepreneurs who stimulate their local economies.

Our globally recognized model centers on a youth-led, adaptive, participatory framework for youth, families, and communities. This unique application of the “Learn-Do-Teach” model for life skills development,  combined with youth-led “Pay-it-Forward” initiatives, ensures youth retain and share knowledge, practice to skill-building and put skills to use responding to local challenges.

Systemic change is created by empowered youth with competence and confidence to influence elders and contribute to community solutions.  They are disrupting the cycle of poverty and changing economic futures of their communities.  

Our commitment leads to the realization of outcomes that include - an increase in the number of rural youths excelling in academics and transitioning to tertiary levels with quality grades; attainment of quality values and life skills in the areas of health, human rights and advocacy; attainment of skills in entrepreneurship, financial management, social capital and leadership; increased parental engagement in advocating for children rights - especially girls - to enhance social inclusion and gender equity.

Over the last decade, we trained 225,000 rural youth to identify opportunities and apply their skills to solve difficult problems. Those youth in turn have impacted over 400,000 additional lives through mentorships, businesses, and community projects.

Our goal is robust, trained, and empowered youth ready to step up to the opportunities and challenges facing themselves and their communities.  

Most recently, our youth and alumni quickly stepped up to the COVID-19 mitigation efforts, through localized distribution of information, creating local businesses making and distributing soap and handwashing stations, and the delivery of food, masks, and other essential supplies to vulnerable families.

Asante Africa Foundation was co-founded in 2007 with the mission to Educate Children and Transform Worlds. Since its founding, Asante Africa Foundation has impacted more than 600,000 lives in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

In 2019, more than 76,000 lives were impacted in rural East Africa; with 60,781 impacted by our  Teen Leadership and Entrepreneurship Incubator Programs, 11,821 through our Adolescent Girls Advancement programs, 3,679 directly impacted by our Accelerated Learning in the classroom and Scholarship programs. All program components utilize our foundational “Learn-Do- Teach” methodology to stimulate active learning and community contribution while learning.

 Our program goals are to impact the lives of an additional 1,000,000 young people in East Africa by 2025. 

 We understand that COVID-19 has affected our plans and we expect 2020 and 2021 will require re-imagining what learning can be inside and outside the classrooms.

Our commitment to the future of education is that every child is an active participant in their development. We accomplish this by bringing quality education and life skills training to rural East African youth with the strategic goal to have a measurable impact on more than 1.6 million lives by 2025.  We work to proactively prepare youth to be contributors in the global economy with strong moral leadership, respect for the planet, and commitment to partnerships to ensure sustainable success. 

 In 2020/21, COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reimagine education and fully understand that learning does not stop at the classroom walls. To ensure vulnerable youth are not left behind in the wake of COVID, we are piloting alternative learning methods including outdoor study groups, radio-based programming, and technology-based learning in deeply rural areas.

 We are dedicated to the Learn-Do-Teach pedagogy throughout our academic and life skill programs with focus on skill development, active learning, community contribution and strengthening resilience in our youth. We achieve this by

• Supporting youth education through scholarships, school facilities and essentials, mentoring, English language classes

• Deepening Financial literacy and digital skills through financial awareness in primary schools, secondary school savings clubs, teacher training, expanded RACHEL and HOTSPOT training

• Developing Age-Appropriate Life Skills to deepen adolescent advancement including actively involving boys in our girls’ programs

• Expanding the Leadership and Entrepreneurship Program empowering young adult networks with career opportunities within their community

• Creating an active alumni network to provide mentoring, connections to opportunities, and community outreach. 

Our major barrier in 2021 is emerging from COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts of COVID-19 on rural youth can be extensive, especially on young girls.  Addressing increased pressure on youth and schools will include greater need for social support for the children (particularly girls), and anticipating the implications on learning; considering limitations on how youth will convene and how to leverage local resources and create learning whatever the status of traditional schools. With food insecurity and economic stress that comes from the pandemic response, maintaining focus on education and life skills development will require more localized innovation. COVID-19 is pushing education to be increasingly online, which presents a huge barrier for rural children whose access to tech and internet is severely limited; being able to safely and equitably access Asante Africa  programming could be mitigated by offering online resources and means to access them.

 Over the next 5 years, we see that the demand for our programs significantly exceeds the supply. To ensure the continuity and integrity of our efforts as we grow we must consider efficient and effective scaling, developing a robust alumni network, expanding community engagement, engaging implementation partners, and growing our global donor and support networks. 

Resilience and Adaptability fuels our continuous innovation - for our youth in our programs, our staff and the organization as a whole. Remote learning tools are a natural part of the advancement of our program reach.

 Tackling barriers initially starts with a mindset that challenges are temporary and solvable with the right team, out of box thinking and enlisting others to join our journey. 

To ensure the continuity and integrity of our efforts as we grow we are:

> Scaling while maintaining a lean organization ensuring efficient use of funds. 

> Growing through existing community partners and the youth themselves assisting in expansion to new communities

> Building financial support through global visibility of our achievements and potential attracting like-minded funding partners

> Seeking implementation partners with complementary skills that believe youth must be at the forefront of learning 

> Seeking additional communities that are ready to own the programs and step up to the challenges

We must balance growth with the maturation of our community self-sustainment efforts.  

> Integrity of the implementation model is required for transparency, depth of learning, risk tolerance, and long-term ownership and sustainment

> Programs must be locally owned and guided by experienced staff to ensure quality implementation.

Partnerships are key to our success.  We partner with both funding and execution partners to increase our impact and ensure quality programs are delivered locally. Our partnerships include corporate partners (such as Tullow Oil and P&G), larger NGO’s (such as Red Cross and USAID), learning partners (APHRC and CRI-East Africa) and grassroots implementing partners (such as youth or women-led CBOcs and NGOs). Examples include:

• Obama Foundation Girls Opportunity Alliances - Sharing global best practices from Tanzania for adolescent girls and boys staying in school and developing life skills for resilience and empowerment

• Red Cross Kenya - advancing the education, self protection and resilience skills for adolescents and young women, (inclusive of men as allies and advocates) in regions devastated by early marriage, domestic abuse and HIV

• Tullow Oil, Kenya - collaborating partner for funding scholarships for youth seeking jobs and starting small businesses supporting the oil/nascent energy sectors across rural counties

• P&G, East Africa - supporting girls with sanitary pads and products to facilitate keeping girls in school

• USAID - Young Women Transform Prize fueled research and validation of our programs effectiveness

• Implementation partners - Numerous County-level youth NGO’s and Women led NGOs to lead, guide, and mentor our adolescents and teens toward their goals while partnering with us to monitor and evaluate program effectiveness 

We are an East African, on the ground, implementing organization working at the grassroots level within our communities co-creating the programs to be delivered, leveraging best practices and recognized pedagogies for youth education.  Many resources designated for education never make it to “off the paved road” communities furthest from the capital city. 

 Our programs are designed to deliver educated, resilient youth capable of managing obstacles and creating opportunities as they enter the workforce. They are inclusive of academics and age-appropriate life skills development.   The model takes a holistic development approach having interventions at practically every age level. COVID-19 is also driving a greater need for inter-generational knowledge building at the village and community levels. 

 Our program components are broken into learning modules typically delivered by the club leaders through the school year and supported by AAF mentors (typically graduates and alumni). In between learning modules, the youth tackle hand-on projects ranging from personal budgets to leadership speeches, to volunteering and taking skills and knowledge home to share with parents. Typically, there are team and individual competitions through the year, centered around local needs requiring innovative solutions. These competitions stimulate team work, communication skills, creativity, and project planning empowering innovative solutions to real challenges. 

Asante Africa Foundation raises money from a wide variety of sources, including individual donations, grants (foundations, corporations, government), corporate sponsorship, and fundraising events. This income covers day-to-day operating expenses, program implementation, scholarships, and monitoring and evaluation. The organization does not exceed expenditures of over 20% of total income for a given fiscal year on activities outside of East Africa, including staffing of the marketing, finance, and fundraising teams.

Asante Africa Foundation strives to attain diversified revenue streams to manage risks and ensure sustainability.  Our five-year strategic plan includes revenue consisting of 14% corporate sponsorship, 42% individual donations, 42% grants, and 2% products and services. To achieve this diversification, we are taking the following steps:

• Conduct a competitive assessment to benchmark a service-based revenue stream - Our long-term goal is to generate revenue through a fee-for-service business model to include a certification program that targets other social enterprises as clients. We plan to have a prototype ready to test by 2021.

• Develop funders and learning partners  willing to make a multi-year commitment to the replication and scaling of our proven model.

• Develop multiple funding partners that have committed to investing in long-term capacity-building for the organization. Asante Africa Foundation is currently introducing the organizational five-year strategy plan to these grant makers.

• Develop an alumni connection program which includes a donation-based networking service for alumni to assist with career development and professional networking through Asante Africa Foundation.

N/A

Asante Africa Foundation has initiated a five-year strategic plan which includes specific revenue targets. Our goals include the following 2025 targets:  

1.    Achieve $4.2 million USD in annual revenue, 

2.    Source at least 40% of funding directly from East Africa

3.    Attain a diversified portfolio to manage risks and build sustainability

This plan was conscientiously designed with the intention of balancing the organization’s revenue growth with the organizational maturity of its people, processes, and technology readiness.

 To achieve balance between revenue growth and organizational maturity, each element of the successful fundraising portfolio is interdependent on one or more other elements.  To ensure a sustainable financial model, the five-year strategic plan anticipates moderate growth of revenue while also building the capacity of its resources. Asante Africa Foundation sources its revenue from a portfolio that includes grants, individual donations, corporate donations and events. As a critical element of fundraising strategy, we seek to strengthen our capacity in East Africa by sourcing at least 40%, or 1.7 million dollars, of revenue from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda by 2025. This strategy necessarily involves developing a talented and skilled in-country staff who can manage all aspects of fundraising and cultivate strong relationships with both East Africa-based grantors and corporate partners.

As a global team, we anticipate programmatic expenses in 2020 to be ~ 1 Million USD with overhead typically around 12%. 

 We are successful in operating with low overhead because of the high volunteer rates by local business people in-country and a collection of dedicated volunteers in the USA managing the back office support pro-bono.

Asante Africa Foundation was founded with a core belief that brilliance and talent are universally distributed, but opportunity is not. Our goal is to bridge that gap. CEO Erna Grasz had experienced well-meaning charity as a youth that limited personal choice, forced outside solutions, stripped her mother's dignity, and created a sense of humiliation and embarrassment.  Erna was committed to finding a better way.

As an organization, we are aligned with SDG goals #1, #4, #5, and #8 and  committed to focusing on those traditionally left behind; deep rural youth, with particular focus on orphans, and adolescent girls. We believe that the youth we guide and nurture do transform lives for the better. Team Asante Africa has been recognized for lifting young women’s economic empowerment, for cost effective and lean financial initiatives that children can transfer to families, for stimulating girls academic learning, and for community change led by the local leaders. 

Our Learn-Do-Teach model, rooted in participants’ commitment to pay-it-forward, means that all of our youth find ways to lead from where they stand in their home communities with a significant multiplier effect.  They form leadership clubs and NGOs, advocate respectfully with community leaders, and effect sustainable, positive change. Our young people are active change agents wherever they are standing and they are transforming worlds through high impact initiatives.

Funding and Revenue Model (Partners) – Our five-year requires strong funding partners both in North America and East Africa. We also seek collaboration with implementing partners who can increase our visibility with key funders and increase likelihood of funding through strong consortia of like-minded organizations.

 Board members or advisors (Advice) – Asante Africa Foundation currently has four independent boards managing respective organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States. We are planning to expand our leadership in East Africa by founding a global advisory council led in East Africa whose focus will be to promote the organization and support fundraising initiatives through developing quality leads and making strategic introductions.

 Marketing, media and exposure (Advice and mentorship) – To ensure that marketing remains globally relevant while preserving brand integrity, Asante Africa Foundation seeks advice and mentorship from marketing consultants, organizations with evidenced success in marketing strategy, and relevant media sources.

Asante Africa Foundation has prioritized funding partners with strategic alignment on mission, organizational values, and diversified portfolio. 

 Potential partners include Middle East funding organizations focused on Africa’s development.  Dubai Cares shares our primary focus on UN SDG 4, ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. Like Dubai Cares, we focus on access to quality primary and secondary education including transitions to secondary.  

 Funding organizations with a focus on Research and Learning provide important evidence demonstrating effectiveness and impact.  Asante Africa Foundation’s programs focus on addressing community problems through youth-led, market-based solutions. A partnership with Gates Foundation’s Global Growth & Opportunity division would help fuel youth innovations at scale to effect widespread local economic growth.

 Our geographic location limits our ability to capture the attention of UK-based organizations. As a leader in global women’s empowerment, DFID’s Vision for Gender Equality to create opportunities for girls and women to enjoy their rights is highly aligned with our Wezesha Vijana program. Partnership with DFID would validate our adolescent, girl-centered programming, transitions, and girl-led secondary-level programming within the global stakeholder network and create awareness to fuel program support.

 Asante Africa Foundation also seeks to partner with implementing organizations through membership in coalitions dedicated to educating children globally, youth employment, and combating gender inequities and injustices that limit girls’ potential. We are currently active in Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, Girls Not Brides, the World Bank Solutions 4 Youth Employment (S4YE) and Brookings Institution’s Girls CHARGE (Collaborative for Harnessing Ambition and Resources for Girls’ Education).